1 Introduction to History Study

I Reference Notes

1 What is history?

a. History is the study of past events.

i The kind of history that is about the events that happened to you in the
past is called personal history.
ii The kind of history that is about the events that happened in Hong
Kong in the past is called local history.
iii The kind of history that is about the events that happened in other parts
of the world yesterday or a very long time ago is called world history.
b. Myths and legends are not history.
c. History has the two special features of continuity and change.

2 Reasons for studying history

We study history because we want:

a. to know how people lived in the past,
b. to know how other people live,
c. to avoid mistakes made in the past, and
d. to know the cause-and-effect relationship of things that happened so that we
can understand how, when and why things happened.

3 How to study history?

a. We can learn about the past by reading the writings of historians.

i Historians use primary and secondary sources to make records of the
past.
ii Primary sources are things written or made by people at the time of the
event.
iii There are three kinds of primary sources:
 Oral sources

1
  Myths.
 Legends.

 Unwritten sources
 Archaeology (e.g. fossils, bones, buried cities, coins, tools
and weapons of ancient people).
 Artifacts (e.g. sculpture, clothes, paintings, photographs,
coins, tools and weapons).
 Buildings (e.g. bridges, canals or churches built in ancient
times).
 Landscape (marks left by ancient forts or cities on the
landscape).
 Written sources
 Government documents (e.g. parliamentary records,
government records, etc.).
 Private documents (e.g. diaries and letters).
 Non-government documents (e.g. advertisements,
newspapers, journals, magazines, etc.).
iv Secondary sources are things written or made by people who were not
there at the time of the event.
v Some examples of secondary sources include:
 Government books (e.g. Urban Council Annual Report).
 Non-government books (e.g. school textbooks, reference books,
atlases).

b. We can also study history by studying the old things dug up by

archaeologists and things that have survived from the past.

c. To study history, we need to know the time when an event happened.

d. Historians have invented the following three ways to count time:

i The Christian way
 Most countries use the Christian calendar, which starts from the
birth of Jesus Christ, to count time.
 The period of time before Christ's birth is called BC (Before
Christ), and the period of time after his birth is called AD (Anno
Domini or In the year of our Lord).

2
  When the year is BC, the bigger the number, the earlier something
happened.
ii The Chinese way
 Some countries like China and Japan use dynasties to count time.
 Historians divide the history of China and Japan into dynasties.
 Chinese or Japanese emperors of each dynasty used a reign-name
to count time.
iii The Muslim way
 Muslim countries use a calendar which starts from the Hegira (the
flight of the Prophet of Allah, Mohammed, to Medina in AD 622)
to count time.
 A Muslim year has 12 months.
 It is about 11 days shorter than a year in the Christian calendar.

Useful words/terms about time

 Chronology is the study of time (or dates) at which things happen.

 Chronological order is to put things in the correct time order so that things
which happened the earliest come first, and things which happened the latest
come last.
 A Time-line is used to show the order in which things happen. By changing the
scale of the line, we can show the events of a day, month, year or century.
a. A Time-line showing the events of a day

b. A Time-line showing the events of a year

c. A Time-line showing the events of centuries

3
4 When did history begin?

a. History began about 4000 BC (6000 years ago) when people first made and
left written records.

b. History is divided into two periods:

i prehistoric times  the period before writing was invented, and
ii historic times  the period after writing was invented.

5 Major developments in the Stone Age

a. The earth's history

i How and when the earth was formed
 No one knows how and when the earth was formed.
 Perhaps, the earth was formed about 4,500 million years ago
when the sun condensed from a cosmic dust cloud.
ii The earth's first living things
 About 3,700 million years ago, oceans were formed by the
eruption of huge volcanoes which pumped water out.
 No life lived on earth because there was not enough oxygen in the
atmosphere.
 About 570 million years ago, the earth's atmosphere was filled
with oxygen.
 The first shelled creatures began to live in the seas.
iii The earth from 300-180 million years ago
 Until 300 million years ago, the earth had a single large land mass
surrounded by water.
 Dinosaurs lived on the surface from 300-70 million years ago, so
historians call this the Age of Dinosaurs.
 Fish and animals without backbones lived in the seas.
iv The earth from about 180 million years ago
 Between 180-50 million years ago, the large land mass broke up.
 Many continents such as Eurasia (Europe and Asia), Africa and
North America were formed.
v The earth 50 million years ago
 The earth was not too different from the one today.

4
  During this period, flowers began to grow, and there were many
birds, insects, snakes and turtles.
 About 120 million years ago, the first mammals (warm-blooded
animals) appeared.
vi The first humans
 About 3.7 million years ago, the first humans appeared in Africa
since archaeologists have found some human fossils in northern
Kenya (肯亞) in Africa.
 Perhaps, the first humans were evolved from a common ancestor
shared with either or both the African apes or the gorillas.

b. The Stone Age

i It probably took more than a million years for the first humans to learn
how to use stone to make tools and weapons.
ii As these people only used stone to make tools and weapons, we call
this period the Stone Age.
iii The Stone Age is a prehistoric period which lasted from about 2 500
000 BC to 4000 BC.
iv Archaeologists have found the remains of Stone Age people in
different parts of the world:
 Lantian Man lived in China from about 600 000 BC.
 Java Man lived in Indonesia from about 500 000 BC.
 Peking Man lived in Zhoukoudian from about 500 000 BC.
 Neanderthal Man lived in Germany from about 200 000-40 000
BC.
 Cro-Magnon Man lived in France from about 40 000-10 000 BC.

c. The Old Stone Age (2 500 000  15 000 BC)

i Early Old Stone Age people lived in caves and ate uncooked food.
ii They learned how to:
 make stone tools and weapons,
 hunt for animals, and
 make fire.
iii After learning these things, Old Stone Age people began to eat cooked
food, wear clothes, and live and work together.

d. The Middle Stone Age (15 000  10 000 BC)

During this period, people learned how to:

5
 i use traps to catch animals,
ii kill animals with bows and arrows, axes and spears, and
iii catch fish with boats, nets and hooks.

e. The New Stone Age (10 000  4000 BC)

i In warmer places such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the New
Stone Age began earlier and ended earlier.
ii During the New Stone Age, people learned how to:
 plant seeds in the ground to grow crops,
 build houses with wood, mud and stones,
 keep chickens, goats, pigs and sheep,
 make clay bowls and pots to store food and water, and
 make better clothes from wool.

f. Why the Stone Age ended

i The Stone Age ended about 4000 BC (6000 years ago).
ii This is because people learned how to use such metals as copper,
bronze and iron to make tools and weapons.